#183. This is not a lie, but marketing and positioning!

Hi all!

The exhibition "Army-2022" is taking place in Moscow. The Internet was flooded with videos with a robot dog, to which

hooked up a grenade launcher. The RIA Novosti website published the following note:

Russian designers presented a sample of the M-81 robotic complex, capable of conducting aimed fire and transporting weapons, at the Army-2022 forum.

The development, outwardly resembling a dog, belongs to the Russian engineering company JSC "Intellect Machine", working in the areas of robotics, weapons and artificial intelligence.

The line of robots has its currenttechnological appearance - in order to fulfill the tasks assigned to the product, they were performed using bionics - the principles, structures and mechanics characteristic of the animal world. That is why they resemble dogs, especially in dynamics.

It is added that the company JSC "Intellect Machine" "intends to establish the production of such machines in Russia."

In the video, we are shown a robotic dog thatlooks one to one like the products of Unitree Robotics. You can buy a Go1-dog on the official website. The price bites, but not much - 550 thousand rubles. By the way, some services even offer to rent a dog for several hours or days. Here is a video from the official website, which demonstrates the skills of a dog to accompany a person.

On the other hand, it may mean thatdid Russian designers take a dog and teach it to aim with a grenade launcher? But it looks exactly as if an RPG was simply strapped onto the dog's back. For some reason, they even left the aiming bar.

An image search showed that the Soviet RPG-26 "Aglen" was on the back. But the dog, most likely, does not have a real weapon, but an airsoft version, the body of which is made of textolite.

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The moment you want to highlight, RPG-26 "Aglen"- This is a disposable grenade launcher with an effective range of 250 meters. It turns out that the dog should get pretty close to the target, and then run to the base to reload it.

Another point, the maximum load capacitydogs - 3 kg. A loaded RPG-26 weighs 2.9 kg (a grenade weighs 1.8 kg), plus, as I understand it, the aiming system should also weigh at least a kilo. Overweight will undoubtedly affect the speed (no load speed is 17 km / h) and battery life (no load 1 hour).

The organization itself is also of curiosity -joint-stock company "Intellect Machines". The extract shows that the organization was registered on April 15, 2022 with an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles. They work quickly: nothing has passed, and already the prototype is running.

Registration address: St. Petersburg, st.Shevchenko, d. 17, letter A, room. 28-n, office/rm 2/4. This is an ordinary residential building on Vaska. By a funny coincidence, a friend lives next door, and I usually park in front of this house so as not to look for a place in the yards.

In such informational occasions, the most annoying thing is that some kind of disrespect for the intellectual abilities of the population is felt.

However, do not blame the "Russian designers". The same is true for large corporations. Let's look at Xiaomi and Samsung!

How Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 "beat" Samsung Z Fold 4 in technology</ p>
- The thinner the better?
Ultra-thin glass as Samsung innovation</ p>
- Who makes UTG (ultra thin glass)
- Cons of UTG
Always working Bluetooth and Wi-Fi: how to turn it off completely
Conclusion

How Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 "beat" Samsung Z Fold 4 in technology

Three producers at once last weekshowed their vision of smartphones with a flexible screen. From a marketing standpoint, this is a failure. We talked about this in the material about Motorola Razr (2022), but I repeat. When several brands present products designed for the same target audience, potential buyers immediately begin to do not study the product, but compare. Often they compare without going into details, but simply by characteristics.

So, photos of new “folds” from Samsung and Xiaomi have already begun to appear on the Internet.

This is what both smartphones look like when folded:

And here, so to speak, a comparison of slots:

So what do you think? Which of the two smartphones seems more premium and technically advanced to you? Obviously a thinner smartphone.

Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 really looks much cooler than the new Samsung. Has Xiaomi really mastered the art of finally showing Samsung where it belongs?

The thinner the better?

Firstly, in its smartphone Xiaomi uses a flexible screen manufactured by Samsung. Just like the protective flexible ultra-thin glass, this is also a Samsung development.

Secondly, it is obvious that the Samsung Fold has a larger gap, since the company uses a different “loop” mechanism.

The first and main difference between the mechanism and Samsungis that the smartphone from Samsung is waterproof, while Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 is not. The Samsung device has an IP68 certificate, that is, it can lie at a depth of 1.5 meters for 30 minutes.

The second important point is the principle of operation of the mechanism.

Please note that the Xiaomi smartphone,in fact, there are only two modes of operation: with an external screen when the smartphone is closed, and with the main screen when the smartphone is completely open. Xiaomi MIX FOLD 2 cannot work in a half-bent position. Below in the photo is Galaxy Fold 3 and Fold 2. Xiaomi cannot do this:

In the photo Samsung Galaxy Fold 3 and Fold 2

Xiaomi deliberately decided to abandon the mechanismfixing the smartphone in a half-open state. If the hinge mechanism were thicker, then the smartphone itself would become thicker when folded. By the way, as noted on the Chinese Internet, the Xiaomi MIX FOLD 2 loop is identical to the one used in the first generation of Samsung Fold (adjusted for the fact that the locking mechanism was removed from there).

The third point, which we have to learn about innear future: what about heating? Both smartphones use Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. This is an improved version of the very hot Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. As the first tests of the chipset (in other smartphones) show, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 has become colder. But it's still a very hot chipset. Look at the cooling system of the new OnePlus 10T against the cooling system of the iPhone 13 Pro Max. She is gigantic. Plus, at the presentation, OnePlus recommended buying a special evaporative cooling case for the smartphone.

So the big question is how both will behave.smartphone under load. There is a slight suspicion that Samsung will do better and the difference of 0.8 mm in case thickness went just to improve the cooling system. I want to remind you that the previous Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 in the hour-long CPU Throttling Test sagged up to 60% of the maximum performance. However, it is possible that Xiaomi was guided by the logic that it will still "throttle" and what's the difference - by 40 or 60%. But the smartphone will be thin and stylish.

Thus, as a result, we have a smartphone, inin which the flexible screen is developed by Samsung, the ultra-thin glass is also from Samsung, the folding mechanism is either provided or copied from Samsung models. However, this is a product that Xiaomi calls its innovation.

It looks a lot like a robot dog with a grenade launcher, right?

Ultra-thin glass as Samsung innovation

Xiaomi was praised in the previous section, now let's praise Samsung too, so that no one is left deprived.

After both Xiaomi and Samsung said thatthey use ultra-thin flexible glass in smartphones, and Samsung generally positions itself almost as the inventor of such a solution, I decided to find out more about this product.

Ultra-thin flexible glass somehow did not attractmy attention, because after experimenting with the Galaxy Z Flip, which was easily scratched, I was sure that it was just plastic, called glass for the sake of marketing. Everything turned out to be more interesting.

Who makes UTG (ultra thin glass)

So, almost immediately after the newsabout the first smartphones with a flexible screen, doubts began to arise about their reliability. Meticulous journalists tore the first Galaxy Fold with everything they could - from nails and teeth to sharp objects.

Samsung quickly realized what was what. So back in February, when the first Galaxy Z Flip came out, Samsung announced that its screen was UTG protected. UTG is short for ultra-thin glass.

The first Galaxy Z Flip also had a hard time.They ripped it off no worse than the Galaxy Fold, discovering that the so-called flexible glass (claimed to be an achievement of Samsung's ingenious thought) did not seem to be glass. Firstly, a layer of plastic was applied on top, which is easily scratched.

Secondly, it turned out that the glass that wasdeclared an achievement of innovative Korean thought, produced by the German company Schott. On the official Schott website there is a video about glass bending. And the product name is listed: Xensation Flex.

The description says that the company is over 30 years oldengaged in the production of ultra-thin glasses. There are also several videos about the product, in one of which a company representative says that a client came to them asking to make not just ultra-thin glass, but one that could fold like a sheet of paper.

As stated in one of the officialIn the videos dedicated to the product, bending glass, in general, was not such a difficult task, since, it turns out, any ultra-thin matter can be bent (they say, physics!). The problem was to make the glass resistant to bending and increase the angle of the bend. For this, the company has developed a special chemical hardening technology. The expert suggested thinking of it as a spring between atoms, and hardening strengthens this "spring", allowing the chemical bond to stretch.

By the way, it turns out that ultra-thin glass has been with us for a long time. It has good conductivity, so it was often used for fingerprint scanners.

If you speak English, you can see herethis video below. There, the expert outlined the ingredients of the flexible glass, one of which with a smile called “magic dust” (like know-how), while adding that other companies know what kind of “dust” it is, but still won’t name the composition out loud. The main point is that in composition it is really real glass.

By the way, I recommend to watchSchott's YouTube channel. The company shoots funny and quite informative videos about their products (some of them require knowledge of at least basic German).

Well, you can see the production process itselfhere. This is a video from the How It’s Made series, judging by the inscriptions in German, they came to shoot just at the Schott factory. It turns out that flexible glass is stored wound on a coil.

To the third "fold" to the production processflexible glass company Corning joined. This was a very logical move as Samsung entered into a new 7 year partnership with Corning in April 2021, plus don't forget that Samsung owns a stake in Corning.

Corning was also familiar with the technology before.flexible glass. The company has a product called Willow Glass that has been used for smartwatches and other similar gadgets. But like Schott, Corning's first step was to develop glass tempering technology.

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The new Galaxy Z Fold4 uses glassfrom Corning. As I understand it, the flexible glass from Corning turned out to be better than the version from the German Schott. I draw this conclusion from the fact that Samsung sold Schott products to Xiaomi as ultra-thin glass for Xiaomi MIX Fold 2. This is a typical Samsung tactic: the company always keeps the best solutions for itself, and sells the product of previous generations to the market.

From what you read, you might get the impression thatSamsung receives the finished product, and itself only sculpts a marketing nameplate, passing off as its own developments. Maybe it is so. Samsung itself in a press release, speaking about the production process, reports that "In the process, the UTG is injected with a special material up to an undisclosed depth to achieve a consistent hardness). That is, we are talking about what an employee of Schott called "magic dust." It is likely that Samsung's R&D laboratories were involved in the development of this secret ingredient, thanks to which they can now say that they are the inventors of glass. And then the company shared its knowledge with Corning.

Cons of UTG

Expert Schott says that UTG (ultra thin glass) has excellent strength and will never break in laboratory conditions, no matter how many times you bend it.

In real life, the brittleness of UTG increases with each scratch, especially if the scratch appears at the points of tension, that is, the fold.

Statement about increased brittleness due to scratchestrue for ordinary glass. But in the case of ultra-thin glass, which is 30 microns thick, or a third of the thickness of a human hair, a scratch can be fatal. It is for this reason that UTG glasses are glued on top with a protective film.

However, as practice shows, so far the screen panels do not withstand faster, and the glasses, on the contrary, hold well.

It will be interesting to see the tests of the Samsung Galaxy ZFold4, as the smartphone uses a new generation of ultra-thin glasses. And at the presentation, Samsung rather aggressively emphasized the reliability of the new smartphone.

The story about Samsung is not as unambiguous as about the grenade launcher dog and the flexible xiaomi phone, but there is something similar. Or not?

Always working Bluetooth and Wi-Fi: how to turn it off completely

Many articles with recommendations for improvementdevice battery life starts with tips to turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you don't need them. Most obedient users open the shutter of their smartphone and press the switches. Google Fast Pair Service technology reminded me that it's not that simple.

Google Fast Pair Service is a proprietarya Google technology introduced in Android 10 and later. Its essence lies in the fact that the smartphone is constantly scanning the space around it, looking for new devices. It is thanks to this technology that the “magic” animation works when the user opens the case with the headphones, and the animation is displayed on the smartphone screen.

Another feature of Google Fast Pair Service isdata synchronization between devices with a Google account. Thanks to this, a new device connected to the Google account of one owner will recognize the headphones and offer to connect them. That is, you do not have to enter them into pairing mode. Just a notification will appear on the screen that familiar headphones are nearby.

But there is also a funny moment - a notification thatyour headphones are nearby, works even when Bluetooth is turned off on the smartphone. Plus, in the best traditions of the genre, the notification is extremely intrusive, you brush it off, and it crawls out. And this can happen even when the headphones are currently playing music from another smartphone. Well, what do you want? Bluetooth version 5+ allows you to simultaneously connect to two different signal sources.

If you have a similar problem, then get rid offrom her is still possible. You need to go to the geolocation settings (for this, it is enough to long-press the corresponding icon in the blind). There you will find items about scanning Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Bluetooth item should be disabled.

In my opinion, such frills, when, in fact,to completely turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, you need to go to two different settings, they look at least unethical. And after all, we understand that this is not so much about improving geolocation, but about better surveillance of the user.

Conclusion

Everyone loves to read about flagships, but it's worthpublish material about some inexpensive smartphone from Tecno or some other brand, as they are immediately accused of advertising. Like, people still don't buy it. Here MTS in its telegram channel shared sales statistics for July. 85% are Chinese brands (Xiaomi, realme, Tecno - 66.5% + "Other" category - 18%):